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Historisk tidskrift 123:2 • 2003

Innehåll (Contents) 2003:2

Uppsatser (Articles)

Marknad, bönder och kön. En fråga om likhet och skillnad

Maria Sjöberg

Fulltext (pdf)

Summary

The Market, Peasants and Gender. A Matter of Similarity and Difference

Present trends in science – where interest in individuals as historical actors has increased lately, just as small narratives are competing with the large narratives of syntheses – seem to indicate that syntheses are out of fashion. These trends could partly be interpreted as reactions to a former hegemony of structural perspectives in history, as a result of an impact of post-structuralism in a broad sense. This sketch of history today has its origin in a classical dichotomy in the social sciences: individual and society or actor and structure.

In order to argue in favour of a renaissance for syntheses in history, I will try to show how to dissolve, from my point of view, the very inhibiting opposition between individual and society in the historical sciences. In order to succeed in this task, the article starts with a review of the market as a historical phenomenon and as an illustration of how a predominant structural perspective has been used to explain historical change in both agrarian and gender history. In both fields, the market happened to be treated as an overall explanation. In both gender and agrarian history these interpretations emerge from a conception of the market as similar over time. The market has changed dramatically but mostly in quantitative aspects. More or less, the market has been seen as the main sign of historical change.

In these narratives the essence of the market has been taken for granted. Contrary to this idea, I will argue for a mixture of structuralism and poststructuralism, a perspective, which has its starting point in the differences over time and therefore emphasises the qualitative aspects of historical change. In this perspective, where focus is on the cultural conditions for e.g. the market, neither individuals nor society could be neglected; both are interpreted as necessary and dependent parts of the process. Furthermore, gender (among other aspects) should be treated as a precondition for historical change, even the change of the market. Finally, I try to illustrate a way to look upon the change of the market from a gender perspective. After all, market forces are not forces of nature. They belong to the sphere of humanity, which, like everything else, is built on and within gender relations.